'Overwatch' Game Director Speaks Up About Summer Games Controversy

Players have been complaining about Blizzard’s approach to the new Summer Games items for Overwatch . These Olympic inspired skins, emotes and icons are only available for three weeks in a special Loot Crate. Players are worried they won’t be able to get everything they want in time and the whole situation will limit those who strive to collect everything.

Jeff Kaplan, the Overwatch game director and Blizzard saint took to the forums to try and squash some players frustrations. Kaplan understands where the anger from these players is coming from, but: “the event has a ton of *ABSOLUTELY FREE* content available to all players for *FREE*. The idea is play the game and get free, cool, rare stuff for the next three weeks. Yes, you can buy loot boxes but you also earn them for free... just by playing. There is a ton of content here that literally no one knew existed until it went live.”

This is Overwatch’s first big event, and Kaplan and his team wanted to try something different. These items are not disappearing forever once the event is over. Kaplan says that they are still: “learning and experimenting with this event. And if the event is received well (my impression so far is that it is being received well once you remove the debate over the items not being available for credits), we will run it again next year. Our Summer Games are on a yearly schedule -- not a 4 year schedule.”

Overwatch’s development team are always straight forward with the community, and they hear the player’s complaints. Hopefully, we keep getting more of these events because Lucioball is really fun.